APYA
Finest intercontinental fashion trade and business connection
What we do
APYA is a creative agency. We consult, produce, connect and create imagery. Our special trait is the linking-up of fashion brands, media creators and producers from Africa and the Diaspora. We support you to achieve solutions for your brand.
We are a creative space and act as a representative agent for social change, pushing the deconstruction of media and using fashion as a vehicle to make the untapped potential of creatives of African descent more visible and embedded in a new age.
Detached from visual normativity, we use the media of photography, fashion, moving image and music as artistic means of expression for contemporary representation.
We break stereotypes and change narratives. Let us create a new reality and shape the future.
– Beatrace Angut Oola, CEO
My story!
I am Beatrace. Gamechanger, creative, solution driven, lecturer, frequent speaker on topics of sustainability, economic cooperation and development. I’m looking at fashion and culture through a lens of intersectionality and decolonization.
My origin is the pearl of Africa also known as Uganda. I was born in Germany, spent my childhood in Kampala and at an age of 5 years, we left Uganda and moved because of the political and uncertain times first to Nordrhein Westphalia and then moved on to Baden Württemberg. My main interest is African and Afro-diasporic practices with focus on participatory media and exploring fashion from a curatorial and critical perspective. In 2012, I had my start in the African fashion movement after realizing the lack of representation of BIPoC in the fashion industry. I recognized and understood the historical and socio-political underpinnings that allow the fashion industry to function in colonial ways based on the exploitation and degradation of labor and the natural environment. Since then, I became a voice in the larger African fashion and sustainability movement. My experience in the media and fashion landscape as fashion stylist, creative project manager, curator and creative producer, led me to create an agency for marginalized groups with authentic aesthetics and to support the visibility of BIPoC. My driving forces are authenticity, creativity, unity, social and environmental justice. As creative project manager I have worked on campaigns for SMART, DIOR, Montblanc, Zalando X Vans, FILA, Daily Paper and many more. Additionally I am a speaker, moderoter and a guest lecturer at the University of the Arts Bremen. I believe in forward thinking people and mindful collaborations that allow outstanding partnerships. My dream is to create and shape the future. I love to connect people, out of this, the Fashion Africa Now podcast was born and it feels good and I am the host looking forward to interesting conversations around fashion in Africa and its diaspora. Together and connected we can be the change. The change begins in you! – that is the story!
APYA
The letter “A” represents Africa. “pya” is a Swahili word and can be translated as “fresh”. APYA is a Creative consulting agency focused on fashion aesthetics, sustainability and networking. As trailblazers we have connected creatives from Africa and the African diaspora within the German landscape.
APYA Productions was founded in Germany (2012) by Beatrace Angut Oola as its first creative agency for Black Indigenous People of Colour that specialised in fashion and media. Hence, APYA embodies the creative scene, presenting itself, forward thinking, conscious and innovative.
